I think the beauty looks I most regret are those I was persuaded

Host: The mirror glowed in the dim light of the backstage dressing room. Rows of faded bulbs flickered, humming softly like old bees. The air smelled of powder, perfume, and a trace of loneliness. Feathers, sequins, and worn-out heels lay scattered across the table, survivors of a dozen performances.

Jeeny stood before the mirror, wiping the red lipstick from her mouth with a trembling hand. Jack leaned against the doorframe, his sleeves rolled up, his tie undone, watching her in silence. The muffled echo of the audience still drifted in from the cabaret hall — laughter, applause, a world just beyond the curtain.

It was late. The show was over. The masks were not.

Jeeny: “Funny thing about beauty, Jack… it’s never as heavy as when you have to wear it for someone else.”

Jack: “You say that like it’s armor.”

Jeeny: “Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s a cage.”

Host: She looked at her reflection, her eyes shadowed by fatigue and memory. The glitter still clung to her cheekbones, catching the tired light like fragments of old applause.

Jeeny: “Dita Von Teese said, ‘The beauty looks I most regret are those I was persuaded into.’ I know exactly what she meant. Every time someone told me I’d look better with more color, more shine, more skin… I disappeared a little.”

Jack: “That’s not persuasion, Jeeny. That’s performance. Everyone wears a mask for something — a job, a lover, a dream.”

Jeeny: “But when the mask starts looking more alive than you do, what’s left?”

Jack: “A professional.”

Jeeny: “A ghost.”

Host: The room went quiet again, save for the faint buzz of the old mirror lights. Jack’s eyes, grey and analytical, softened as he watched her scrub her face raw with a tissue — as though she was trying to erase a person the world had drawn on her without consent.

Jack: “You look fine. More than fine.”

Jeeny: “That’s the problem. ‘Fine’ belongs to everyone else. I don’t even know what I look like anymore.”

Jack: “You think anyone does? Every version of ourselves is a negotiation. We build what others can tolerate.”

Jeeny: “You sound like a salesman of identities.”

Jack: “I’m a realist. Beauty’s just another language, Jeeny. You adapt or you fade.”

Jeeny: “Adaptation isn’t surrender, Jack. This —” (she gestures at the glitter, the makeup, the discarded costumes) “— this is surrender dressed as confidence.”

Host: The light above the mirror flickered again, revealing their faces — hers, streaked with makeup; his, lined with quiet disillusionment.

Jack: “You talk about regret like it’s a sin. But persuasion isn’t always evil. Sometimes people see what you can’t.”

Jeeny: “Or they convince you to stop seeing what you already do.”

Jack: “So what, you’d rather walk out there bare-faced? The audience doesn’t pay for authenticity. They pay for illusion.”

Jeeny: “And what do you pay for, Jack?”

Jack: “Control.”

Jeeny: “That’s exactly it. Beauty stops being beautiful when someone else holds the brush.”

Host: She turned to him now, her eyes glimmering beneath the streaks of removed mascara — vulnerable, defiant. The faint sound of laughter outside grew distant, swallowed by the tension between them.

Jeeny: “Do you know what it’s like to be reshaped until you fit someone else’s dream? To have your worth measured in how well you disappear behind their fantasy?”

Jack: “Everyone plays their part.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe that’s the tragedy. We all learn to play so well we forget who wrote the script.”

Jack: “And what if the script gives you a better life?”

Jeeny: “Then it’s still borrowed. No amount of applause can fill a borrowed soul.”

Host: Jack’s hands tightened slightly around his glass, knuckles whitening. He looked away, at the stage beyond the cracked door, where music was fading and chairs were being stacked — a whole world dismantled, piece by piece.

Jack: “When I was younger, I thought love made people beautiful. Now I think beauty makes people loved.”

Jeeny: “And that’s why we end up mistaking decoration for devotion.”

Jack: “Maybe that’s all there is — the surface, the glow, the moment before the lights go out.”

Jeeny: “If that’s all there is, then why does it hurt when the lights come back on?”

Jack: (pausing) “Because truth is bad lighting.”

Host: A faint smile crossed Jeeny’s lips, brittle but sincere. She sat down, the chair creaking beneath her as if the room itself sighed with her.

Jeeny: “You always sound so sure of yourself. Like you’ve already accepted that cynicism is wisdom.”

Jack: “Experience taught me that sincerity gets crushed under expectation.”

Jeeny: “Then you’ve let the world convince you of its own ugliness.”

Jack: “And you’ve let it convince you that beauty must mean purity.”

Jeeny: “No. I’ve learned that real beauty has nothing to do with approval. It’s the moment you stop performing — even if no one claps.”

Host: Jack took a long breath, staring at her. The mirror behind her reflected both of them, but faintly — two figures blurred by old glass and older regrets.

Jack: “You think you can live like that? Without anyone’s validation?”

Jeeny: “I can try. Dita said she regretted the looks she was persuaded into. Me too. But what I really regret are the beliefs that came with them — that I had to earn permission to exist.”

Jack: “You make it sound like beauty’s a crime.”

Jeeny: “No. Just a confession. Every eyeliner stroke, every fake smile, every costume — a confession of how far I’d go to be loved.”

Jack: “And now?”

Jeeny: “Now I want to be seen, not decorated.”

Host: The fire exit light hummed faintly above the door. The room felt both raw and sacred — like a sanctuary for those stripped bare of illusion.

Jack: “You know, maybe the persuasion isn’t the real danger. Maybe it’s how willingly we surrender. Nobody forces us to trade our truth; we just get tired of holding it.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But tired or not, it’s still theft when someone convinces you to abandon your reflection.”

Jack: “Then what do you do? Stand against the world? Refuse every suggestion?”

Jeeny: “No. I just stop confusing attention with affection.”

Host: The mirror lights dimmed further, one by one, until only a few remained, glowing like distant stars. Jeeny leaned forward, wiping the last trace of makeup away. Beneath it — her real face. Unadorned. Unapologetic.

Jack watched, speechless, as though witnessing something sacred — not the transformation of beauty, but its return to honesty.

Jeeny: “You know what’s strange? When I first started, people told me beauty was power. But now, I think authenticity is.”

Jack: “Authenticity doesn’t sell.”

Jeeny: “Neither does regret. But I’ve been paying that price too long.”

Jack: “So what now?”

Jeeny: “Now I choose. I decide which version of me gets the mirror.”

Host: The sound of rain began outside, soft but steady. It tapped against the old windowpane, washing the neon glow from the street into blurred streaks of color — red, gold, blue, melting like watercolors.

Jack: “You think the world will let you stay unpainted?”

Jeeny: “It doesn’t have to let me. I’ll do it anyway.”

Jack: “You’ll lose their admiration.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe I’ll finally gain my reflection.”

Jack: “You’ll stand alone.”

Jeeny: “That’s how we all start being real.”

Host: Jack smiled then, the first honest one she’d seen in months — small, tired, but real. He looked at her, at the woman beyond the artifice, and saw the quiet defiance in her stillness.

The mirror reflected them one last time — not performer and skeptic, not believer and cynic — just two people standing in the half-light, stripped of disguise.

Host: Outside, the city lights shimmered through the rain, refracted into fragile prisms of truth.

And in that small, flickering dressing room, Jeeny’s face — bare, human, unguarded — became the most radical act of beauty there was:
to no longer be persuaded into someone else’s idea of who she should be.